The first chapter from Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity by David W. Galenson. From Humanities, teaching Rembrandt: Why introduce children to masterpieces? A review of Medievalism: The Middle Ages in Modern England by Michael Alexander. More on Peter Gay's Modernism: The Lure of Heresy. Edward Hopper's subjects are looking for something that may have passed them by — is that what we look for in Hopper? asks Michael Dirda. A review of Edward Burra: 20th-Century Eye by Jane Stevenson. A look at how Chinese artists are the new stars of international auctions and there's a bull market for their work. An obituary for shock art: Fake bomb didn't bring down the Royal Ontario Museum, but it did mark the passing of an artistic era — fact is, there's little left that can rouse us from our comfortable numbness. From Mute, a review of Signs of Life: Bio Art and Beyond.

From Newsweek, a cover story on a new American holy war. From Britannica, Robert McHenry on religion and the "culture war", so called. David Brooks on faith vs. the faithless. Are Christian conservatives "Christian" or "conservative"? A review of Head and Heart: American Christianities by Garry Wills. A review of After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty- and Thirty-Somethings Are Shaping the Future of American Religion by Robert Wuthnow. Making Mormon history: An influential religion struggles with how to tell the story of its past. Where politics and Buddhism intersect: An interview with Ethan Nichtern, author of the new Buddhist political treatise One City, about faith, youth, 9-11, consumption, and powerlessness. A review of Lew Daly's God and the Welfare State. From The Washington Post Magazine, a cover story on the trials and tribulations of Hashmel Turner: An unassuming small-town preacher and his unconventional Christian lawyer are trying to win the right to pray to Jesus at city council meetings.